Pirate Kingship.

Chapter 186 The Battle for Insect Blood, the Culprit

The [Insect Swarm] came faster than Byron expected.

It was barely noon when a large, pitch-black cloud emitting a violent buzzing sound flew over from the depths of the sea in the east.

Before landing, a sour smell peculiar to insects filled the camp built in the river valley.

Byron looked at his favorite bombed squid that Eight Fingers had just carefully grilled in front of him, and suddenly lost his appetite.

I had no choice but to put down the food and quickly stood up to greet him.

He touched his chest and bowed:
"Teacher, you're here really quickly. I thought you would be here tomorrow at the earliest after you organized the staff."

Thousands of iron-black locusts fell to the ground and regrouped to form the mysterious figure of the third-level great wizard [Insect Swarm] who was always clad in a black robe.

"Haha, in an emergency, we have to take emergency measures.

The bizarre [Zhi Shen] you described in Nautilus is very valuable to our Giant Insect Book School, which specializes in studying and cultivating various insects.

I'll give you credit for this time.

Whatever problems you encounter while practicing black magic, I can answer them for you during this operation."

He smiled and nodded to Byron, the new disciple who had made great contributions many times, and took out a strange-looking pocket from under his robe.

It looks like the stomach of some creature, flesh-colored, with uncleaned lymph and blood vessels on the surface.

It jumped up and down in the palm of the insect swarm, as if it had just been dug out of the body of a creature and was still alive.

In fact, this is a precious second-level item that many Wild Sequence Beast Tamers dream of: [Flesh and Blood Swaddling].

With a slight shake, the swaddling clothes of flesh and blood suddenly "spit out" a dozen figures covered in mucus as if vomiting.

Among them, the chief disciple of the Zerg, the second-level beast tamer [Thousand Legs] Diggory, woke up on his own like a hibernating centipede (Chapter 123).

He raised his hand and removed the sticky gray hood on his head, revealing a pale face of a young man.

But his face was stiff, and his skin had a strange chitinous luster, as if he was wearing a fake mask, and there were two centipede-like red tentacles on his forehead.

Rather than looking like a human, he looks more like a giant upright centipede.

An arm with a chitinous shell protruded from the cuff, stretching out section by section like the body of a centipede, stretching out densely packed, blade-like blood-red tentacles.

It popped out like lightning and bit the necks of a dozen people who had their eyes closed and seemed to be in a dormant state.

"Cough cough."

After just a few breaths, the remaining people all opened their eyes and crawled up from the ground one after another, coughing out the mucus in their mouths and gasping for breath.

[Level 2 Rare Item: Flesh and Blood Swaddling Clothes]:
“A very magical space prop that can carry not only dead objects but also living things.

It allows the animal trainer to move flexibly with his large or large number of animals, and can also be used to transport living people.

It's just that when they are in the swaddling clothes of flesh and blood, they will be affected by a liquid secreted by it and forced into a dormant state.

It’s difficult to get into battle right away.”

These men brought by the swarm are all burly in build, but expressionless, and their eyes are even more numb than those of the oppressed sailors.

He didn't say a word from beginning to end.

"Open your mouth."

[Thousand Foot] Digory gave each of them a mouthful of an unknown blood brew mixed with transmuted blood.

The swarm of insects shook the meat bag in their hands again, and a group of strange-looking giant black and red insects crawled out from it and each wrapped around the body of a man.

It wrapped its shell tightly around their bodies and its dense tentacles desperately penetrated into their flesh.

Gradually, a black and red knight armor covering the entire body was formed.

The shells on the arms transformed into heavy swords and axes that shone with cold light.

The bodies of these dozen people twitched violently, and it was obvious that the process was very painful, but none of them cried out.

Byron saw through their open mouths that the tongues of these people had all been cut off long ago. They seemed to be a group of specially trained slaves.

Finally, the insects inserted a tubular mouthpart into the slaves' mouths.

His head embraced their faces, as if he was putting on a pair of strange helmet masks.

A dozen burly men suddenly turned into a dozen even more burly heavy knights.

His whole body exudes the ferocious aura of a large predator.

"This looks like...Dracaena iron-bone nematode?"

Byron felt that the scene before him was familiar.

Back then, when he fought against Old Norwich of the York family on the battlefield of Anchor Bay, the opponent had used a similar ability.

Using the forbidden knowledge in the "Book of Giant Insects", a kind of iron-bone dragon nematode was cultivated.

It can coexist with the human body, providing the owner with a layer of defense that is no less than that of the Iron Knight's armor, as well as super regenerative capabilities.

The side effect is photophobia. The Parasite Armor must never be used in sunlight, and if used too many times, it may completely turn into a big insect.

But these slaves obviously did not look like extraordinary beings.

In this way, one can easily be parasitized by the iron-bone dragon nematodes cultivated by black witchcraft.

Perhaps he could temporarily burst out with strength far beyond that of an ordinary person, but it wouldn't be long before he would be completely eaten up by this parasite.

The best possible ending is that the animal nature gets out of control and the person turns into some kind of half-human, half-insect ferocious monster.

Oftentimes, the line between human and weird isn't so clear.

The unknown world is unpredictable and turbulent, and even more unpredictable is human nature.

The [Insect Swarm] waved his hand casually at him:
“Don’t worry, these are just necessary consumables for capturing the target.

You just need to come into the cave with us, and the guards don't need to follow you.

According to the information you provided, those natives have probably dug through a hot and humid underground cave. In that kind of environment, your men would only be a burden if they followed them in."

"is teacher."

Byron was quick to respond to good advice.

The reason for inviting the other party over was to find a free fighter or human shield, wasn't it? Naturally, he was happy to do so.

After arranging the defense matters, he followed the swarm of insects into the mine.

[Echoes of History] You can easily read the past of every stone. This gold vein is very poor and has little value in mining.

However, the quality and reserves of hematite and its associated chalcopyrite seem to be very good.

Unfortunately, the natives who had not even entered the Bronze Age had no idea what was going on and did not realize that the key to their civilization was hidden here. Not long after they walked, they found a deep hole on the rock wall on one side of the mine tunnel.

Before I even entered, a wave of hot and humid air hit me in the face.

The [Insect Swarm] twitched its nose:

“My estimation was correct, there really is a huge underground cave hidden here.

Digory, Byron, open the spiritual barrier.

The Iron Knight leads the way."

Immediately, the dozen or so heavily armored knights rushed in silently, holding whale oil lamps, wielding swords and axes, and smashed the entrance of the cave until it was large enough for two people to walk side by side.

Byron followed closely and found that the temperature in the cave might have reached 40 degrees and the humidity was over 80%.

In this hot and humid environment, ordinary humans would be in danger of death if they were to stay inside for more than 20 minutes, and even if more people came in, they would just be a burden.

But it didn't have much impact on them.

When a group of people went deeper than 200 meters underground along a rugged tunnel and the cave suddenly became clear, they were suddenly shocked by the scene before their eyes.

"Are these crystal pillars? They're so huge!"

There were countless huge crystal clusters.

The cave in front of us is filled with giant crystal columns that are more than ten meters long and weigh dozens of tons. Under the illumination of whale oil lamps, they reflect magnificent light.

The sound of dripping water beside my ears proves that these crystal clusters, which have been growing for who knows how many tens of thousands of years, are actually still growing in units of thousands of years.

After being shocked, several people shook their heads regretfully at the same time:
"Unfortunately, these crystal pillars are worthless."

Byron's [Ship Log] provides the clearest view and also reveals the principle of crystal column formation.

Karst caves and crystal caves in other places are actually not rare.

This is mainly due to the magma surging upward from under the earth's crust, causing the crust to crack.

Acidic volcanic fluid seeped into the cracks, slowly corroding the limestone on the crust and forming caves.

Subsequently, under the continuous heating of underground magma, groundwater containing calcium sulfate began to penetrate the entire cave tens of millions of years ago, and condensed in places with low temperatures, thus forming gypsum crystal caves.

That's right, these are just transparent calcium sulfate gypsum crystals, not crystal clusters of silicon dioxide.

Even crystal is made of the same ingredients as glass and is not valuable.

Unless there is an extraordinary material that is infected by the source tide, it will be possible for them to make a fortune.

Instead of hoping to make a fortune from crystals, it would be better to follow these interconnected underground passages. You might be able to find a meteorite that fell long ago in the deepest part.

The group of people moved nimbly among the criss-crossing crystal columns.

Ten minutes later, many huge, strange-shaped luminous mushrooms suddenly appeared in front of us, and each mushroom was as tall as a tree.

When they came here, it was as if they had entered a giant mushroom forest.

If you listen carefully, you can hear rustling sounds, which obviously means there are other creatures living here.

"It should be that external substances such as fallen leaves, animal carcasses, spores, fungi, etc. enter the cave, and then are digested by special fungi to feed other organisms.

Eventually, a huge closed ecosystem was formed.

That [Zhi Shen] should be nearby."

At this moment, a cry suddenly came from Byron's waist bag.

Squeak squeak..
The gold digging rat that he captured for snooping into the restricted area slipped out of his waist bag, climbed onto Byron's shoulders, and jumped towards the depths of the mushroom forest.

This rat, like the man-eating sharks, also drank the blood of transmutation and became one of his contracted subjects.

However, Byron’s control over these contracted objects is far inferior to that of the animal trainer, and he can’t even express his meaning clearly.

The Zerg ordered the Iron Knights to scout the way forward, while nodding approvingly to Byron:

"The Giant Insect Book School is most suitable for part-time animal trainers, but you, a Lighthouse Sequence pirate, have trained sharks and gold diggers that are pretty good.

It is not impossible to take both into account in the future.”

As he spoke, he subconsciously adopted the teacher's tone:
"Byron, the first step in the initiation ceremony for the two major branches of the Bloodthirsty Cult is the [Blood Holy Grail].

But the Bloody Mary faction focuses on using [Transmutation Blood] to prepare various blood brews, while our Giant Insect Book faction focuses on using Transmutation Blood to cultivate various insects.

Does not completely exclude the other party's knowledge.

In the end, they all end up in the same place.

The forbidden book "Bloody Mary's Gourmet Recipes" passed down by the Bloody Mary faction is indeed closer to the origin of [Mother of Creation Lilith] than our "Book of Giant Insects" and is also purer.

However, it takes a lot of time to develop a strong fighting force.

At low levels, although the various blood brews gave them more means, their combat effectiveness was far inferior to our Giant Insect Book Sect."

Listening to [Insect Swarm] talking about the "Insect Blood Dispute" between the two factions, Byron inexplicably had a sense of familiarity.

The same is true for a certain swordsmanship sect. Is it the present or the future?
"Especially when we accidentally obtained the supernatural 'disaster' beyond the specification, the incomplete 'Touch of the Kraken'.

With the gourmet who possesses the Holy Grail of Blood as the anchor, it is easy to destroy those Bloody Mary pies.

Your choice to join us is the best decision you have ever made in your life. You are closer to eternal life than many kings of the Old World and even the saints of the church.

It’s a pity that such a useful strategic treasure was lost by the idiots of the York family.

I personally took over the handover with Old Norwich of the York family."

When the swarm of insects shook their heads and sighed, they did not notice that a cold light suddenly flashed in the depths of Byron's eyes.

'Handover? You?
I already knew that the Kraken's Touch was related to you bugs, but I didn't expect that the person who handled it was actually you.'

[Secret: The Shadow Behind the Red and White Rose War, Influence 31] The decoding density has also increased from 60% to 63%.

After identifying the key culprit and accomplice, Byron not only did not attack them, but his attitude became even more respectful.

'Now is not the time, since everyone in the Bloodthirsty Cult is working hard to sacrifice the blood of [Mother of Creation Lilith] and obtain the final ritual [Scarlet Holy Grail] and the blood of eternal life.

It would be more satisfying to stab you at that critical moment than to do it now.'

At this moment, a suppressed groan suddenly came from the front.

"It's bitten, chase it!"

The swarm of insects became more energized and immediately rushed towards the mushroom forest.

(End of this chapter)